Advice for renting when on housing benefit! Please

[ListenToYourHeart]

Bit of background - DP lost he's job so we have been claiming housing benefit for our 2 bed house, the rent was £800 and the max the housing benefit would pay was £800 so luckily all worked out well. Poor DP is trying so hard to get a job but having no luck :( I gave my job up when I was pregnant 2 years ago to be a SAHM.
Anyway our landlord has put the rent up by £75 a month, the housing won't pay the extra (I dont blame them it's an awful lot for this house!) and we can't afford it either so the landlord has given us a months notice, we are moving into my mums spare room and putting our furniture into storage as we have no other option, we have been bidding on the housing for 2 years but are still in the 300's..
Has anyone got any advice in what we can do? Is it hard to find a property to rent that accepts housing benefit as all I've heard is negative stuff and it's really getting me down!
Any advice would be good.
TIA
And sorry for such a long post! Also for any spelling/punctuation mistakes I'm on my phone.

There is the not very nice route of refusing to leave the property and waiting on a court eviction to be officially homeless and get emergency accom from the council - not the best way to go IMO but it is an option.

If it were me I would ring around the local letting agents and ask if they have any properties that accept HB. I would also ask your LL if he has any friends who have a property to let, and if he would ask them if they would consider HB, a personal recomendation would curry a lot of favour with those LLs reluctant to accept HB.

I think the area you are in will dictate how many LLs will take HB, around here (NE) its not too much of a problem, but in other places its very limited.

I would also start getting some glowing references together, the biggie is from your current LL (because they are most recent and presumably the only LL you have had while on HB).

How is your credit rating? A lot of people credit check now, if its good then fine, if not get on to experian/equifax and see if there is anything that can be taken off now to improve it.

oreo - I don't wanna take that route as then I think I will look like I've been a bad tenant to future LL's also because I'm not going to end up homeless as I have my mums to go to thankfully, I agree it's not a nice route to take and wouldn't really wanna do that to the LL. Thanks for those tips though will start ringing around letting agents and asking if they accept HB, I'm currently living in London but wouldn't mind moving out further.

first - at the moment haven't currently got any savings however should be able to start putting money away when I'm staying at my mums, YY to having a guarantor, your suggestion is actually quite a good idea something to look into, thanks.

Thats nice to hear Listen! And if you are fleixble as to where you can live all the better, especially in London.

Just another tip, I'm a LL and for the first time I contacted an agency to see about managing my house the other day - we were talking about how to pick a good tenant. The agent (from belvoir) said they

Take references from past LL's

Want a contact from your employer - they won't accept payslips as proof of employment - they want to contact them themseves as too many people fake them.

They credit check - and this was the bit that I was quite impressed by - they will ask the tenant if they have any defaults or ccj etc. If the tenant tells the truth and says yes I have a couple of defaults from when I lost my job etc then the agency will still consider them as tenants. If they lie they won't. They will be credit checked either way, but its a test of integrity. I thought that was quite good!

Good luck

oreo Very flexible even happy to move on the borders of London, Essex would be great for us too, but just having no luck finding a place that accepts housing benefit

I don't know whether our LL will give us a good reference, he's being very difficult at the moment and seems to be very moody with us since we said we can't afford the rent, we gave him the months notice he asked for and since he has ignored our calls/messages, sent people round to view the house without giving us any notice and then rang to say that we put people off renting the house as no one has said they will rent it (we have never said anything bad about the house to any people that have viewed it) one person simply said to us she didn't feel the house was worth the money for the area.

The credit check thing the estate agents told you is a very good thing and seems very fair. I'm not sure what our credit history is like we're only 21, have never had any debts or credit cards, all our bills, internet, phones etc are all paid on time so should hope our credit history is good!
Thank you for the advice